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SERPIL OPPERMANN Ecocentric Postmodern Theory: Interrelations between Ecological, Quantum, and Postmodern Theories The ecological turn has not only brought an integral awareness of the natural world into the field of literary studies, reorienting the humanities toward a more biocentric worldview, but has also drawn attention to the role of literature in influencing our knowledge of the world. According to Norman N. Holland: ‘‘Literature has power over us. At least it certainly feels that way when we are, as we say, ‘absorbed’ in a story or drama or poem.’’∞ The cognitive function accorded to literature is of fundamental importance for ecocritics, who expect of writers that they inscribe ecological viewpoints in their work. Scott Slovic’s question, ‘‘How can literature and literary studies help us appreciate both local and global environmental concerns?’’≤ recalls the earliest ecocritical inquiries into the possible e√ects of literary studies within the biotic processes, such as the memorable questions posed by Joseph W. Meeker, who asked if literature is ‘‘an activity which adapts us better to the world or one which estranges us from it.’’≥ If literature and its study can in some sense help restore our connection to the earth, then its epistemological dimension becomes a core concern for ecocritical analysis. Literature is one of the most e√ective ‘‘signifying practices ’’∂ (producing and receiving experience), and conceptual frameworks (what we think and know about the world) find their best expression in it. Its influence upon our conceptions of ecological systems produces culturespeci fic discursive practices (acts of reading and writing the earth) that profoundly a√ect the state of human and nonhuman communities. Defining it as ‘‘an intellectual and emotional laboratory,’’ Peter Swirski has argued that literature ‘‘contains the narrative and cognitive machinery for examining issues that challenged thinkers of yesterday, and will continue to challenge the thinkers of tomorrow.’’ Indeed, as Swirski posits, literature in e√ect generates knowledge, because it involves inferences about the world which influence our perceptions: ‘‘like so many other things that human beings do ecocentric postmodern theory ≤≥∞ naturally, universally, and transculturally, our aptitude for imagining other worlds is rooted in evolutionary adaptation.’’∑ This leads straight to the e√ects of human knowledge on the natural environment, a subject on which Keith Wilde and Michael T. Caley have written in their interpretation of the Canadian philosopher Jerzy A. Wojciechowski ’s theory of the ecology of knowledge. According to Wojciechowski, humans are culturally and biologically transformed by knowledge. Our environments also undergo a deliberate transformation ‘‘transmitted through human minds whose interpretations are necessarily influenced by changes in the ambient world and the state of our species.’’ Wilde and Caley contend that ecosystems and human knowledge ‘‘exist in complementary relationships .’’ Knowledge, then, is the prime instrumental tool for the desired change from anthropocentrism to more holistic ecological thought in our biotic relations. ‘‘Humans create knowledge by acts of rational e√ort,’’ the authors write, and ‘‘we use this knowledge to a√ect the world around us. In turn, the world acts back on us, motivating renewed acts of knowing. These actions employ and modify the body of knowledge, producing new impacts on the ambient world and consequently on the knower and her neighbors and progeny. Thus, humankind as knowers and thinkers, the ambient world and the body of knowledge are in an ecological relationship.’’∏ The complementary relationship between knowledge and nature is best described by David Bohm, the chief proponent of the ecological paradigm in quantum theory. Relying on experimental evidence, Bohm avers that nature responds to human knowledge in a nearly synchronic manner. ‘‘What we are suggesting,’’ he states, is ‘‘that only a view of knowledge as an integral part of the total flux of process may lead generally to a more harmonious and orderly approach to life as a whole.’’ That is to say, nature responds to our mind-set, and consequent actions, in apparent physical manifestations. In order to explain more clearly how nature confirms our theories based on the present body of knowledge, Bohm o√ers a meaningful analogy in the first chapter of Wholeness and the Implicate Order: ‘‘experience with nature is very much like experience with human beings. If one approaches another man with a fixed ‘‘theory’’ about him as an ‘‘enemy’’ . . . he will respond similarly and thus one’s ‘‘theory’’ will apparently be confirmed by experience. Similarly , nature will respond in accordance with the theory with which it is approached.’’π Bohm warns us against falling ‘‘into the habit...

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